


You're the Worst

by Nicnac



Series: Elementary Falls [16]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Elementary Falls AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Preston and Priscilla Northwest are terrible parents, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 00:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11862453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicnac/pseuds/Nicnac
Summary: Dipper and Pacifica through the years





	You're the Worst

**September 2005**

Dipper stood next to his sister and glared at Pacifica, trying to look how Grunkle Stan did when he got bad customers. Pacifica glared back at them, except instead of angry she looked like a snob.

Today was his and Mabel’s first day in first grade and first day at their new school and they had been really excited to go. Because even though they had already made a lot of friends in Gravity Falls, most of them were grown-ups or big kids except for Wendy’s little brothers Kevin, who was the same age as Dipper and Mabel, and Gus, who was just a little baby. But Dipper and Mabel didn’t play with Wendy’s brothers much, only two or three times, so they didn’t really count and Dipper and Mabel had been really excited to make friends at school.

They were in the same class, but their teacher Mr. Johnson said that they should sit on different sides of the room so they could meet all the new kids instead of only playing with each other. At recess Dipper went to talk to Mabel and Mabel said that the girl who sat next to her in class was named Pacifica and she was really cool and that they were friends now. But then at lunch Dipper went to go find Mabel again and he found her talking to Pacifica and Pacifica was making her cry. Mabel was only crying a little bit, but Mabel already cried a lot a lot this year because of when Grandpa Shermie died, so Dipper didn’t think she should have to cry any more even a little bit.

Dipper kept glaring at Pacifica and she kept glaring back until Mabel sniffed and said, “But I don’t understand why you’re being so mean. You said we were friends.”

“We are friends. That means you have to do whatever I tell you to. It’s not my fault you won’t,” Pacifica said.

“That’s not what friends do. Friends both listen to each other and they be nice to each other,” Mabel said.

“Yeah, you’re not a friend. You’re… you’re the worst!” Dipper said.

“Well you’re a nerd and your sister is a freak and we’re not friends anymore,” Pacifica said, and then she turned around and walked away.

“Why was she being so mean? I just wanted to be friends with her,” Mabel said.

“Some people are just mean, I think. Like Aunt Karen,” Dipper said. Mabel made a face because Mabel always thought everyone was nice deep down inside. But Dipper didn’t want to fight with Mabel right now, so instead he pointed and said, “That girl over there sits next to me in class. Her name is Candy and I think she’s nice; let’s go ask her and her friend if we can play hopscotch with them.” Dipper didn’t like hopscotch, but Mabel did and Dipper liked Mabel, so he was okay with playing it sometimes.

While Mabel said hi to Candy and her friend who was named Grenda, Dipper looked back at Pacifica. She had found two other girls and she was probably bossing them around and being mean to them now. Pacifica looked over at Dipper again, and he glared at her one more time so she’d know he didn’t forgive her for making Mabel cry. Dipper didn’t care what Mabel thought, he was sure Pacifica was just mean.

 

**September 2008**

As they got back to the Mystery Shack, Pacifica was waiting for someone to tell her that it was time for her to go home now, since they were done with their trip. Pacifica had been surprised she even got invited at all, since she and Mabel weren’t really friends, they were just mini golf rivals. But Mabel had started calling them best rivals lately, which Pacifica guessed was some kind of commoner thing and maybe it meant rivals that act nicer to each other and sometimes go on friendly trips together. That was what it seemed like it meant from the way Mabel was acting, anyway. Or maybe Pacifica got invited because they were all preteen girls – except Wendy might be a teenager, but Pacifica thought she was still only twelve – and Dr. Ford did just take them all to meet real live unicorns, so maybe that was more important than being friends or rivals or enemies or whatever.

But nobody said anything about Pacifica leaving, not even when Dr. Ford opened the back door to the house for them and they all went inside. In that case Pacifica decided she wouldn’t say anything either. She thought maybe this is when they would all crowd together and eat junk food and talk about the unicorns some more, and Pacifica wanted to stay for that. Her parents never let her eat potato chips or drink pop because they said it was poor people food, but Pacifica liked the salty crunch and the sweet fizz of it, even if it was common. And she wanted to talk about the unicorns too; they weren’t like what any of them were expecting, but Pacifica really liked them anyway. She was pretty sure that she and Celestabellebethabelle were kindred spirits, or they would be as soon as Celestabellebethabelle realized Pacifica was the one in charge.

As soon as the door closed, a voice and footsteps came from the other side of the house, heading in their direction. “Grunkle Ford, is that you guys back from the unicorn thing? You’ll never guess what came in the mail today!” called Dipper. He entered through the doorway to the living room right after, holding the lid to a game box with some fantasy creatures on it and the word dungeons like a million times.

“The latest edition!” Dr. Ford said.

“Yeah, Fiddleford and I are already setting it up for all of us to play in the other room. I figured you’d probably want to play Candy, and Mabel remember you promised you would play a round if Grunkle Ford and I did your math. And…”

Dipper kept babbling on excitedly, but Pacifica started tuning him out. She guessed she was going to be asked to leave after all, if they were all going to go play his nerd game. That was fine; she had her cell phone so she could call her driver to come pick her up and wait out front for him to get here. She could talk with the girls about unicorns and eat junk food next time. If they invited her again.

“Pacifica?” She was startled and looked up to find Dipper looking back at her. “You’re going to play too, right? The game is more fun with more people, and we can help you come up with a really cool character to play as, since you haven’t ever played before. You could be a princess, like Princess Unattainabelle’s little sister or something. And we’ll do all your math and charts for you too, okay?”

“I can do my own math,” Pacifica said without thinking about it. Just because she wasn’t a nerd didn’t mean she was dumb. Then she realized that saying that was kind of like agreeing to play the dungeons game with them, and really it wasn’t like she had anything else to do anyway. “And I want my character to have a pet unicorn.”

It turned out Pacifica wasn’t allowed to start the game off with a unicorn, and unicorns couldn’t even be kept as pets in the game at all. But they showed her how to make a character with creature taming powers and told her that they might encounter some unicorns as they played and she could use her powers to befriend one of them, which Pacifica decided was an acceptable compromise, especially since there was plenty of junk food to snack on while she was waiting to get to the unicorns. And, you know, the game itself wasn’t actually completely terrible either. It was maybe even kind of fun, and whenever the math started to get too hard for her, Fiddleford, who had somehow ended up sitting next to her and thankfully no longer smelled like a dumpster fire, would lean over and solve the equation for her without anyone saying anything about it.

About three hours later, after they had just finished a surprisingly intense battle with Probabilitor’s second-in-command, they were taking a minute for a breather when Dipper asked, “Who took the last apricot flavor?”

Pacifica held her can of pop up, “You snooze, you lose.”

“You’re the worst.” Pacifica froze. She and Dipper weren’t friends, but she had thought when he invited her to play D,D, and more D with everyone it meant that he didn’t think of them as enemies any more either. She thought that maybe they were something like best rivals like she and Mabel were, but obviously Dipper had just asked her because of his weird poor people politeness which was so different than the kind of politeness her mother taught her. He probably wished she had said no and just wanted her to leave.

“You owe me a can for next time,” he continued, smiling a bit. Oh. He was just teasing her. Well Pacifica could tease. She was really good at mocking, anyway, and teasing was probably pretty similar.

“I’ll bring you a whole case next time if you don’t make me play your nerd game again,” she said.

“You tell it, sister,” Grenda said, then held her hand up in the air. Pacifica stared at it, confused, before she remembered what she was supposed to do and lightly slapped her hand against Grenda’s.

Dipper was still looking at Pacifica, so she took a long drink from her can of pop, never breaking eye contact with him. Dipper stuck his tongue out at her, and Pacifica, with her mouth safely hidden behind her can, grinned.

 

**July 2012**

“You’re the worst! I can’t believe you roped me into taking out a Category 10 ghost just so your parents didn’t have to invite the rest of the townsfolk to your stupid party. Category 10, Pacifica.”

“Okay nerd, first of all, no one even knows what a Category 10 ghost is besides you and your nerdy uncle. And-” Pacifica tripped, because of course she did, she was wearing high heels to go ghost hunting. That was like the most impractical footwear for chasing down cryptids. Maybe second-most after flippers. Dipper offered her his arm to use to help her regain her balance, after which she threw him an absent-minded “thanks” before continuing. “And anyway, I obviously didn’t know there was literally going to be blood coming from the walls. I would have asked Dr. Ford to take care of it if I’d know it was going to be Category 10 dangerous, or whatever.”

“The walls weren’t bleeding, the creepy collection of mounted animal heads were bleeding,” Dipper corrected. He stepped off the main path, heading toward the tree stump he’d set up with his candles earlier for the exorcism, and slowed down a bit so Pacifica and her stupid shoes could keep up.

“Like it matters,” Pacifica said dismissively.

“Yeah it matters. If this guy were powerful enough to make the actual walls bleed, I’m pretty sure we’d all already be dead. But that’s not the point. The point is if a crazy powerful ghost casts a curse on your family, then maybe instead of putting everyone at risk trying an exorcism, you should just do what he wants and invite a couple more people to your party,” Dipper snapped.

“Maybe, but it’s not like I have any control over my parents’ guest list,” Pacifica snapped back. “And I didn’t exactly know about the whole curse thing anyway. I mean, I knew there was a ghost and I knew he was probably going to try to wreck our party, but my parents decided to spare me any of the details.”

“Oh,” Dipper said. That made sense. Or, it didn’t really make sense, but it sounded like something Mr. and Mrs. Northwest would do. Whatever Dipper might say about Pacifica, her parents really were literally the worst. “Sorry.”

Pacifica gave a shrug that looked like it was supposed to be a lot more casual than it really was. “Whatever.”

“Hey, so why did you ask me instead of Grunkle Ford?” Dipper asked. It wasn’t that Dipper minded helping – well, he didn’t mind helping Pacifica; he was admittedly a little less excited about helping her parents escape ghostly justice – but even if he was good at all the supernatural stuff, Dipper was still just a kid. Grunkle Ford was the real expert.

“Well, whoever I asked to take care of the ghost was going to have to attend at least some of the party, so I thought you were a better choice than Dr. Ford. Kids get overlooked more easily, so the party was less likely to be ruined by the presence of a poor person. That’s all.”

Dipper eyed Pacifica side-long. “You know, if you wanted us to come to the party, you could have just invited us. I mean, I guess your parents wouldn’t have been too thrilled, but we could have told them the tickets were our fee for ghost catching. Or we could have just snuck in; you know Mabel’s always up for any excuse to break out her grappling hook.”

“I didn’t– Look, don’t you have an exorcism to perform or something?” Pacifica demanded.

If he were Mabel, then this would be the part where Dipper hounded Pacifica about what great friends they were and how, despite her aloof act, Pacifica totally loved spending time with all them until Pacifica had no choice but to give in. But Dipper wasn’t Mabel, so he just said, “Yeah, sure,” before setting the mirror down so he could start on the candles.

They were about halfway done lighting the candles – Dipper using a lighter and Pacifica the first candle he’d lit – when the ghost spoke up. “Pacifica, Pacifica. Just let me out of this mirror, and I’ll spare you when I get my vengeance on the Northwests.”

“I’m not going to break you out so you can kill my parents,” Pacifica said.

“Not to mention, you seem a little unstable, man. If she let you out, you’d probably decide that breaking your word to a Northwest was just punishment and go after her first,” Dipper pointed out.

“Very well, children. Then, before you banish my soul, may these tired lumber eyes gaze upon the trees one final time?”

Pacifica looked at Dipper, and he shrugged. It seemed like a pretty harmless last request, and Dipper did kind of feel sorry for the guy. Pacifica must have too, because she picked the mirror up and held it to face the trees. Then the ghost started laughing manically, the mirror glowed bright red, Pacifica let out a yelp, dropped it, the mirror hit the ground, shattered, the ghost was freed, and he flew off cackling about vengeance. So maybe not that harmless. Though on the plus side, he was apparently going to keep his word about sparing Pacifica after all.

Dipper was about to take off running toward the house – he might not like Pacifica’s parents, but that didn’t mean he wanted them killed by a crazy lumberjack ghost – but he was stopped by Pacifica shouting. “Oh my god, seriously? Ugh, fine, whatever.”

“Where are you going?” Dipper asked, as he jogged to catch up with Pacifica stalking off in the opposite direction of the mansion.

“Down to the gatehouse to tell them to let everyone in,” Pacifica said.

“Won’t that make your parents mad?” Dipper asked, in spite of the rather large part of himself telling him to shut up and not make Pacifica second-guess her decision.

“It’s better than getting cursed by a Category 10 ghost. Even if I’m not sure they’ll see it that way,” Pacifica answered. “Besides, most of the people I actually like are on the other side of the gate anyway.”

Dipper gave her a sly glance. “ _Most_ of the people?”

“Shut up,” Pacifica said, smacking him on the back of the head. Dipper just grinned.

 

**April 2015**

Pacifica wanted to play with Dipper’s hair.

This was all Dipper’s fault, obviously. If it weren’t for Dipper then Pacifica wouldn’t have even come to the Shack today, more or less. Ever since Pacifica had started high school, her dad had been spending a lot more time teaching her some of the finer aspects of running a business, and she actually really enjoyed it, in no small part because she was, quite frankly, amazing at it. Unfortunately today’s impromptu tutoring session ended the way most of them did, with her dad wanting her to do something… ethically questionable, causing her conscience to speak up in a voice that sounded a lot like Dipper. Not that her conscience always sounded like Dipper, it just did most of the time, when it wasn’t sounding like Mabel or Candy or Grenda or Soos or any of the other people that seemed to like having Pacifica hanging around in spite of her being a Northwest rather than because of it, including, on one very disturbing occasion, Stan. Of course, Pacifica wasn’t stupid enough to tell her dad that she wouldn’t do what he wanted her to because an imaginary Dipper that lived in her head had told her not to, but she did tell him no, after which her dad had… Well, sufficed to say that she left the mansion as soon as she could. Luckily, she was welcome in the Mystery Shack any time, day or night, no questions asked, though there were occasionally a lot of concerned glances exchanged that Pacifica pretended not to notice.

Once she had arrived, the twins dragged Pacifica up to their attic room for a marathon of Season 3 of Duck-tective, as part of their continuing campaign to prove that it was the best show ever. Pacifica remained unconvinced. Mabel had at least three ongoing craft projects that had taken over half the couch, as per usual, and Pacifica had sprawled herself out across the remaining half. Rather than dragging one of the myriad chairs over to sit on like a normal person, Dipper instead choose to sit on the floor right in front of the couch, which meant his head and his stupid chocolate-brown slightly-curly hair was right there in front of Pacifica in her clear line of sight. See, all Dipper’s fault.

This was stupid, though. Pacifica should just start playing with Mabel’s hair. The two of them had basically the same hair after all, except Mabel’s was longer and so there would be more for Pacifica to play with. Not to mention that Mabel would be totally happy to have Pacifica play with her hair, while Dipper would probably complain and moan and tell Pacifica to cut out it out.

Well, forget that. She was Pacifica Northwest and no one told her what to do, especially not Dipper Pines. If she wanted to play with his hair, then she would play with his hair, and Dipper could just suck it up.

Pacifica reached down and started trying to fluff Dipper’s hair into a Mohawk. “Pacifica, what are you doing?” Dipper asked.

“Playing with your hair.” Huh, this was harder than she’d thought it’d be, considering his hair’s tendency to stick out all over the place. Maybe if she got some product, but that seemed like cheating.

“What, why? Play with Mabel’s hair.”

“Oooo, can you give me a French braid? I can never get them tight enough when I’m doing them on myself,” Mabel said.

“Later. Right now I’m playing with Dipper’s hair,” Pacifica answered. She gave up on the Mohawk in favor of seeing how much of Dipper’s hair she could get standing straight up, sort of like those guys from the animes Soos was always watching.

“Ugh, you’re the worst,” Dipper said, but he still sat up a little straighter to give her better access.

“And you’re a nerd,” Pacifica told him. Once she was done making his hair stand straight up, she tried puffing it out like an afro, then pressed it all as flat and smooth as she could get it, and then finally gave him three tiny braids near the base of his skull. By that point, Pacifica had successfully quashed all the little butterflies that had started fluttering in her stomach when she first ran her fingers through Dipper’s hair, and after she’d finished giving Mabel her French braid, Pacifica had managed to convince herself she had only ever imagined them in the first place.

 

**February 2017**

Dipper opened the door then blinked in surprise at seeing Pacifica standing on the other side. “Hey, happy birthday! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.” It was a long-standing tradition; every year on her birthday Pacifica’s parents threw her a crazy fancy and lavish party, and every year on the day after her birthday Mabel and whoever she had roped into helping that year – usually pretty much everyone – threw Pacifica her _real_ birthday party.

What he didn’t mention, what they never mentioned outside of when it was actually happening, was he had been half-expecting – really more like three-quarters-expecting – her to show up sometime late that night after the party at her parent’s place had died down. That was how the tradition of the second party had originally got started, back when Dipper and Mabel had been roused from their beds at two in the morning by a freshly eleven Pacifica who had only just barely not been crying. In later years Pacifica would tell them a little about what it was like, about making nice to people flashing razor-edged smiles, about being constantly on-guard and knowing that even if everything went perfectly, people would still find excuses to mock behind her back, about the constant pressure of expectations weighing down until she felt like she couldn’t breathe, and about the gentle tinkling of a bell, but on that first night she had just called the party ‘a little much’ and said she needed to get away for a bit. Even though it had been a school night, they had stayed up with her until dawn, watching the bizarre selection available on Gravity Falls late night public access. The next day after school Mabel had dragged Pacifica home with them, then made everyone in the house sit down in the kitchen and play board games with Pacifica while Mabel baked her a cake.  Pacifica hadn’t come over every night after her birthday, but she had occasionally, and the Pines family always slept light that night just in case.

Thinking about it, Pacifica’s expression now was almost identical to one she had been wearing that night seven years ago, except maybe her thin veneer of control had gotten even thinner. Also, seven years ago she hadn’t been carrying a suitcase. “Pacifica? What’s wrong?”

Pacifica made it three more steps, the exact distance between the two of them, before she broke. She clung to the front of Dipper shirt, buried her head in his chest, and sobbed. Dipper would say she was sobbing like the world was ending, except they’d come pretty close to just that a time or two over the years and Dipper had never seen her cry like this. Pacifica was calm, collected, and in charge; she was one of the strongest people Dipper knew, and Dipper knew a lot of strong people. Sure, he’d seen her cry before a few times, but not often and not anywhere near this hard. It made a not insignificant part of him want to panic.

He pushed that part of himself to the side. Pacifica crying was not a sign of the apocalypse, because Pacifica didn’t consider the apocalypse worth crying over. If the world was about to end, then she’d either be helping to fix the problem, or be doing something she considered worthwhile in her final hours, possibly getting her nails done so that when impending doom arrived she looked good for it. No, there was only one thing that Pacifica would cry over, and it didn’t call for panic. And since punching Preston and Priscilla Northwest in the face would almost certainly get him arrested, the situation probably didn’t call for unrestrained fury either.

Instead Dipper wrapped his arms around Pacifica and held her tight. Dipper wasn’t all that great at comforting people, and he didn’t ever know what to say, but he did his best, rubbing his hand up and down here back and murmuring little nothings like “it’ll be okay” and “I’ve got you” and “let it out.” He must have been doing something right, because Pacifica didn’t immediately abandon him for Mabel, who was way better at the comforting thing, as soon as the latter showed up.

It was probably a good twenty minutes before Pacifica was calm enough that Dipper felt comfortable repeating his earlier question. “What happened?”

Pacifica took a step back out of his arms and for a moment she just stood there with her eyes tightly shut and fist clenched at her sides. Then with a forceful exhale she released all her tension and her eyes snapped back open. To someone who didn’t know her as well as he did, she looked and sounded almost like her normal self as she answered. “I came down to breakfast this morning and there were two things waiting at my normal seat: the dress mother selected for me to wear to my birthday gala this evening and a packed suitcase. They gave me a choice between the two. As you can see, I choose the suitcase.”

Dipper suspected there was a lot more to the story than that. If nothing else, there was a conspicuous lack of the ubiquitous bell, the one that always made Dipper want to break out the blow torch – not that he would, not after what had happened last time. Mabel looked over at Dipper, and when he locked eyes with her he could tell that she could hear the skipped spots in Pacifica’s story just as well as he could, but they both silently agreed not to dig deeper at the moment. The remaining details would come out sometime, days or weeks or even months from now, in the dead of night when the dark and the quiet made secrets easier to share, and they could wait until then.

“What do you need?” Dipper asked, largely because he knew that what Pacifica most needed was the opportunity to take charge again.

He expected her to answer in practical terms with regards to her situation: she needed somewhere to stay – the Shack and the spare twin bed in Mabel’s room, Dipper’s old one before he got too tall for it, would be fine for the next few nights, but long-term it would probably be better to ask Fiddleford, since he was the only one with the space for Pacifica to have her own bedroom – she needed more clothes than what her parents packed for her – Mabel could probably make an entire wardrobe worth of clothing to Pacifica’s exact specifications in a ridiculously short amount of time – she needed help sorting out what she was going to do after high school now that she didn’t have the Northwest money or name to fall back on – a lot of colleges had already closed their application windows, but not all of them and Dipper was fast becoming an expert at finding and applying for scholarships and financial aid – and other things like that.

Still, he wasn’t exactly surprised when she said, “I’d like to move my party to today. If we can.”

“Of course we can; today is your birthday after all!” Mabel said. “I’ll call up all the girls and let them know about the change of plans, then go get started on the food. Dipper, you call the guys and then get started on the sprucing this place up. Pacifica, you supervise Dipper to make sure he doesn’t mess up the decorations.”

“I’m perfectly capable of handling some party decorations,” Dipper called after Mabel as she flitted out of the room, but she ignored him. Pacifica didn’t offer any sort of snarky quip about his sense of aesthetics either, and that more than anything proved to him that she wasn’t nearly as okay as she was pretending to be. He turned back to look at her and wished he knew the perfect words to say to make everything alright again. “Pacifica I… I… you’re the worst?”

Pacifica’s lips twitched, not enough to call it a smile, but it was a real almost-smile, and a small spark of the usual fire appeared in her eyes. “Shut up, nerd, and get to decorating.”

 

**June 2021**

Pacifica was feeling a little bit guilty for bailing on the party, even though she knew none of her friends would be angry at her for it or blame her for needing a little space to herself. Really, the party was only being held one-fifth in her honor anyway. The other four-fifths were for Dipper, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda, as all five of them had managed to graduate college at the same time. More or less; completely aside from each of the four different schools they had gone to having a different end dates for the spring quarter/semester, Mabel still had a summer abroad program to complete before she officially graduated, Dipper was starting school right up again in the fall for his PhD, and Pacifica was actually planning on more school as well, though she was sticking to night classes and online courses to get her MBA. Still, it was close enough, and they all had decided that having one joint party for graduation was more fun anyway.

Pacifica leaned back a little more, feeling the rough wood of the Mystery Shack’s back deck against her palms, and decided that she was also feeling a little bit like she wished she would have thought to grab a pop before bailing on the party. Oh well, she’d get one later when she went back in. It wasn’t like she was planning on staying out all night or anything. It was just that everyone else was playing a card game that Grenda had learned from one of her friends at school which involved at lot of hands pounding and slapping down on the table and an inordinate amount of shouting – though, to be fair, pretty much everything with this group involved inordinate amount of shouting – and Pacifica was never up for more than one round of it. She’d sit out here for a little while and when it sounded like the pounding and slapping had died down a bit she’d rejoin everyone.

The door creaked open behind her, and Pacifica glanced over her shoulder to see Dipper coming out with a can of pop in either hand. “Here, you can owe me one for next time,” he said, handing her one of the cans.

“Have I ever actually gotten you one the next time?” Pacifica asked. She popped the top on her pop and took a sip without waiting for an answer; it was a rhetorical question anyway.

“I live in hope,” Dipper replied good-naturedly, and Pacifica flashed him a grin.

“So,” Pacifica said a moment later when it appeared Dipper wasn’t going to talk or do anything besides drum nervously on the top of his unopened can. “Did you get tired of card games too? Or have you got something on your mind?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean I kind of have something I want to ask, tell, ask you,” Dipper said.

Pacifica smiled, even though she found it monstrously unfair that someone could be that adorable when they were a nervous wreck. “I’m all ears.”

Dipper cleared his throat and passed a hand through his hair. Mabel had dug up Dipper’s old lucky cap earlier and stuck it on his head as “an auspicious beginning to our new educated lives,” but he must have taken it off before coming outside. Despite what Pacifica had just said, she found herself interrupting Dipper’s train of thought to say, “I like you better without the hat.”

“I – Really?” Dipper asked, flushing.

“Yes, well I admit you pull off the trucker hat look better than most people, but that’s not the same thing as actually pulling it off,” Pacifica said. Besides, while she knew that Dipper’s hat thing had lasted as long as it did because he had apparently genuinely loved hats for some reason, Pacifica had been there with him in middle school and she knew why he had started wearing hats in the first place. She liked him better without.

“Thanks, I think,” Dipper said. “That is kind of related to what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You wanted to talk to me about your hat?” Pacifica asked. That’s really not where she’d pictured this conversation going.

“No, not about my hat. But you said I looked better without my hat and I was just thinking that… ugh. Look okay, I know I’m not that good-looking…”

That certainly wasn’t true. Pacifica could see how he might have gotten that idea into his head, since Dipper’s awkward phase had been really long and _really_ awkward to be honest, but he had cleaned up considerably in the past couple of years. He’d always had good muscle tone, but it wasn’t until he’d stopped sprouting up like a beanpole and had a chance to fill out a bit that you could actually tell that by looking at him. Then there was that weird teenaged boy aversion to basic hygiene that he’d snapped out of after about a month of college; he’d actually called Pacifica to get her advice on different types of face wash for his acne and she could have cried for joy. And of course there was that one ex of Dipper’s that Pacifica had always thought was just a little too soft for him, but she loved the girl anyway, since she’d finally managed to convince Dipper to get his hair cut by someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing and now his curls tended to look artfully tousled instead of just messy. There were other subtler things that were harder to define that had changed too, something about the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders and the like. The end result was Dipper definitely wasn’t in the awkward phase any more. Pacifica would even call him good-looking. Very good-looking.

“… and I know I’m not rich…”

Rich was really a relative term, Pacifica had come to realize sometime after her parents had kicked her out. She had been abstractly aware before there were shades to wealthiness, but it wasn’t until she no longer had a seemingly endless supply of money at her beck and call she really understood it, understood, and appreciated how lucky she had been to have people that cared enough about her to not let her end up on the streets. So Dipper was right in that, even with the million dollars he had inherited from his deceased parents when he turned eighteen, he was nothing like rich as compared to Pacifica’s parents or Fiddleford, but as compared to Pacifica with her precisely one bank account totaling precisely two hundred thirty-six dollars and seventy-nine cents, he was stupidly wealthy.

“… and I know I’m a nerd…”

Of course he was a nerd, but he didn’t have to say it like it was a bad thing. Pacifica liked that he was a nerd; she wouldn’t keep bringing it up otherwise. When she had been younger Pacifica wasted a lot of time looking down on other people for every single flaw she could hunt out in them. That was what her parents had always done, and she had just assumed that was the way everybody did things. It wasn’t until after Pacifica started making friends, real friends not well-groomed and carefully selected lackeys, that she realized the whole thing was just a waste of energy. She had no problem making her opinion known, good or bad, when it was relevant and appropriate, but she had better things to do with her time than belittle everyone that crossed her path. She tried to focus her attention on things she liked instead, like Dipper and his nerdiness.

“… and I know you’re way out of my league…”

Well now he was just being ridiculous. Pacifica’s fault for just letting him go on and on, probably. So to shut him up, she leaned in and kissed him.

In between strategizing the best way and time to ask Dipper out herself, coming up with a long list of reasons why dating Dipper was a terrible idea that was bound to end horribly and ruin everything, and being deep in denial over having ever so much as thought the words “Dipper” and “dating” in the same sentence, Pacifica had come up with a plan of how she would respond if Dipper were to ask her out. She would interrupt his babbling – because if Dipper ever did get the nerve up to ask her out then he would definitely be babbling – with a firm kiss. Having made her point she would then flash a wry grin and say something witty. Her standby was currently “You can pick me up Friday at eight,” but honestly she wasn’t crazy about how cliché that sounded and was mostly just planning on going with whatever felt right in the moment.

The one thing that in all her planning she’d somehow managed to overlook was kissing Dipper to shut him up involved _kissing Dipper_ , something that she’d wanted to do since… well, she didn’t like to think too closely on exactly how long she’d wanted to do that, mostly because she didn’t actually know for sure. A long time at any rate. Now that Pacifica was finally doing it, what felt right in the moment was kissing him some more. So she did.

Dipper had been wanting to kiss Pacifica for about as long as Pacifica had been wanting to kiss him, or so she assumed by the way he was kissing her back, like not being able to kiss her all along had been killing him by inches, and now he had to make up for lost time. Making up for lost time, now there was a thought. In fact it was the last completely formed and coherent one that Pacifica had for a while.

The back door opened and Dipper and Pacifica – now sitting across Dipper’s lap, a position she could only vaguely recall getting in – both startled. Stan was standing in the doorway with a look of smug amusement. “I guess I’ll go out front for my fresh air. You two get back to finally getting your acts together,” he said. He went back inside, but his voice still echoed through the closed door for a minute. “Hey Ford, you owe me ten bucks.”

Dipper and Pacifica looked back at each other. Dipper’s expression was a mixture of embarrassment and guilt, like a little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Pacifica knew she must look the same, but something about Dipper’s face was unbearably funny, and she could help but laugh.

Dipper scowled at her. “You’re the worst.”

“You love it, nerd,” she teased.

Dipper’s expression softened as he smiled at her and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. I really do.”


End file.
